‘Where do you get all this from?’ Nona demanded, not wanting to believe. ‘You sit in that library all day when you’re not in class!’

Jula pointed again and Nona followed her line back to the many-windowed spire of the convent rookery. ‘The armies have lost so many message birds they’re using church rooks now. And Darla taught me to read the standard military codes.’ Jula’s face fell. ‘General Rathon died at the coast last week …’

‘I …’ Nona had wanted to tell Darla’s father that she had brought Joeli Namsis to justice for her death. The general would never hear it now. Perhaps it wouldn’t have given him any comfort, but Nona thought Darla would be happier. Darla had never been the forgiving sort. ‘Well … it makes what we’re doing all the more important.’

‘Be careful.’ Jula managed a weak smile.

‘Me?’ Nona returned a brighter one. ‘You’re coming too! There’s no time for you to teach me how filing systems work now. I need you to find the book once we’re in!’

The four friends met by the laundry well, Nona and Jula arriving to find Ara aleady waiting with Ruli.

‘Joeli did this to us,’ Nona said by way of greeting.

‘She made us steal forbidden books?’ Ruli asked.

Nona repressed a snarl. Ruli hadn’t seen Darla die, hadn’t seen Joeli cause it. ‘She knows too much about us. She’s a Tacsis spy, right here in the convent. We should—’

‘Kill her?’ Jula asked. ‘The Book of the Ancestor is against the sort of thing.’ She favoured Nona with a level stare.

‘All right, all right, Holy Sister.’ Nona shook her head. Julia’s calmness, her goodness, was something Nona valued in these situations, though usually in hindsight rather than at the time. ‘I wasn’t going to suggest murdering her … Not exactly.’

‘What then?’ Ara asked.

Nona let her breath escape in a long sigh. ‘We’ll deal with her when we get back.’ She stepped into the well, taking hold of the rope. ‘Come on then.’

The four of them descended to the chamber beneath the novice cloister then began to thread the undercaves. They passed through the cavern where the strange free-standing ring stood taller than a man, crossed the spot where they had once faced down a holothour, and went on down the cliff beyond. Ten minutes later they passed the sad, calcified skeletons in their niche, and finally emerged back into the light through the hidden crack onto the slopes towards the base of the Seren Way.

Despite their covert escape, Nona felt watched. Joeli had driven her to this. Joeli had spurred her to sudden action. And, although she saw no sign of the girl, somehow Nona felt that the eyes on her back belonged to that same despicable puller of threads. Joeli was a spider in a web, but one bigger than she could ever have built herself.

The sense of being under observation waned as they approached the city gates after an hour’s brisk walk from the foot of the Rock. Although the streets of Verity had lost none of their colour they had gained enough streaks of grey and brown to paint a very different picture from the usual scene. Groups of refugees huddled on every corner. The city guard moved them on but there were always more to replace them. Peasants muddy from their journey with tattered bundles on their back. Townsmen leading carts heaped with their household treasures, bewilderment in their eyes. Injured soldiers, lost children, a tide of displaced humanity seeking the sanctuary of the Ark.

Nona let Ara lead them through the city’s finer quarters where the press of humanity eased and allowed them to make progress. Even Verity’s great mansions had a haunted air: windows boarded up, newly conscripted guards at the doors uneasy in ill-fitting uniforms.

Few among the aristocracy or wealthy walked the broad streets around the emperor’s palace. Ara took them close enough to see the spires of Crucical’s home. Somewhere deep within lay the Ark around which the emperors had built their power. Nona could sense its heartbeat even at this distance, a faint pulsing in the fabric of the world. Perhaps they had a shipheart in there. Perhaps something more.

Behind Nona came the grating of the gates opening at the mansion they had just passed, people emerging, the clank of armour. She ignored it.

‘Novices, and so very far from home in dangerous times.’ A man’s voice, dripping with the accents of nobility.

The girls turned to see a ring of armoured soldiers forming around four figures, three dark clad, and one in the finery of a lordling. This last one, lean, tall, his small smile full of mockery and malice, was known to Ara and Nona.

‘Lano Tacsis.’ Ara used none of the honorifics that convention demanded.

Nona opened her mouth but her words ran dry. She had last seen the man as he stood and watched her writhe and soil herself in screaming agony on the floor of a Noi-Guin cell. Flaw-blades sprang unbidden from each of her fingers. At their last meeting Lano had watched her suffer the touch of the Tacsis family toy, the Harm, a sigil-worked torture device. Before leaving he had slit her nostril, a scar she still bore, and promised to return to inflict all manner of horrific mutilations upon her. She remembered the pleasure in his voice. The eagerness.

‘Nona …’ Ara’s fingers knotted in the shoulder of Nona’s habit and she found herself anchored, having unknowingly taken a pace towards Lano.

The soldiers, in Tacsis blues, set hands to sword hilts. The two dark men at Lano’s side adjusted their stances. The third of his close guard was a black-haired woman, Safira, who long ago had stabbed Kettle before fleeing the convent and selling her services to Sherzal. Her presence here spoke of renewed associations between the emperor’s sister and his most fractious vassal.

‘Arabella Jotsis.’ Lano ignored Nona’s advance. ‘I hear that the Scithrowl dance in the charred ruins of your uncle’s halls. These are dangerous times. Especially for little girls.’

Nona found her tongue. ‘You—’

‘And Nona …’ Lano turned his dark eyes her way. He glanced at his right hand and the two crooked fingers, injured when he had first tried to take hold of her years before. ‘I had them dig up your little friend, you know? What was her name? Saya? Saylar? … Saida, that was it! I had a cup made from her skull and gave her bones to my dogs.’

Safira moved in beside Lano, frowning, hissing something.

‘Nona!’ Ara held her back with increasing effort. ‘It’s obvious what he’s doing! Don’t give him what he wants!’

Nona understood. They were here for the book, that was what was important. But she physically couldn’t move away, any more than she could fly. Images of Saida flooded her mind. Saida in the cage, offering comfort. Saida screaming in Raymel Tacsis’s grip. Saida’s body beneath the sheet before the gallows. She gathered herself to leap among the first of Lano’s guards.

Lano’s grin broadened and he mimed taking a drink. ‘I said—’

It was Jula who stepped forward. ‘Honoured Lano of the House Tacsis. I understand that your soldiers are skilled and that those you have beside you likely share Safira’s training. I am sure that you have about your person sigil amulets that you have been assured can absorb and deflect hostile magics. But I must caution you. Nona Grey could tear this street open to the bedrock to see you dead, and level the houses all around us. She could blast you with such force that the amulets your gold has purchased would burn and fall to dust. And before I could take a single step to stop her you would all be smoking offal amid the ruin.’ Jula shot Nona a look. ‘You should know that I would do everything with my power to bring her to the emperor’s justice after such an outburst. But it would be scant consolation to your corpses.’